The Metropolitan Opera's Emmy and Peabody award-winning series of live, high-definition performance transmissions returns to movie theaters across the United States this fall. The fifth season of The Met: Live in HD begins with Wagner’s Das Rheingold on Saturday, October 9, 2010. This season will feature 12 live and 12 encore presentations from October 2010 to June 2011.

Don’t miss the chance to experience the excitement of the Metropolitan Opera, including interviews and behind-the-scenes features exclusive to the Live in HD series, all at your neighborhood movie theater!

Playing in select theaters: Canton Cinema, Eastside 9, Forum 8, Hamilton 16 IMAX, Holland 7, Jackson 10, Kalamazoo 10, Krafft 8, Lansing Mall Cinema, Oxford 7, Portage 16 IMAX, Quality 16, Randall 15 IMAX, Saginaw 12, Savoy 16, W. Columbia 7, Willow Knolls 14

All live events take place on Saturdays. In addition to the live events, Wednesday encore performances will be typically exhibited the third week after the respective live event*. Please check schedule below for exact dates.

Wagner’s Das Rheingold – New Production
LIVE: Saturday, October 9, 2010 1 PM ET / 12 PM CT
ENCORE: Wednesday October 27, 6:30 PM (local time) 
Expected Running time: 3 hours 

Two unparalleled artists join forces to create a groundbreaking new Ring for the Met: Maestro James Levine and director Robert Lepage. The cycle launches with Das Rheingold, the prologue to Wagner’s epic drama. “The Ring is not just a story or a series of operas, it’s a cosmos,” says Lepage, who brings cutting-edge technology and his own visionary imagination to the world’s greatest theatrical journey. Bryn Terfel sings the leading role of Wotan for the first time with the company, heading an extraordinary cast.

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Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov – New Production
LIVE Saturday, October 23, 2010 12 PM ET / 11 AM CT
ENCORE: Wednesday November 10, 6:30 PM (local time) 
Expected Running time: 5 hours 

René Pape takes on one of the greatest bass roles in a production by Stephen Wadsworth. Valery Gergiev conducts Mussorgsky’s epic spectacle that captures the suffering and ambition of a nation. “There are two protagonists in Boris—the title character and the people he rules,” Wadsworth says. “Through Boris we see the private mind of a flawed leader, and through the chorus we see the volatility of a people skeptical about their leaders. Boris seems to me a good person who made a terrible mistake and ultimately cannot live with it.  Aleksandrs Antonenko, Vladimir Ognovenko, and Ekaterina Semenchuk lead the huge cast.

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Donizetti’s Don Pasquale
LIVE: Saturday, November 13, 2010 1 PM ET / 12 PM CT
ENCORE: Wednesday Dec 1, 6:30 PM (local time) 
Expected Running time: 3 hours, 30 minutes 

Anna Netrebko revives her sensational turn in this sophisticated bel canto comedy, opposite Matthew Polenzani, Mariusz Kwiecien, and John Del Carlo in the title role. Music Director James Levine conducts. When Otto Schenk’s production premiered in 2006, the New York Times called it “brilliant” and “wonderful.”

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Verdi’s Don Carlo – New Production
LIVE: Saturday, December 11, 2010 12:30 PM ET / 11:30 AM CT
ENCORE: Wednesday January 5, 2011 6:30 PM (local time) 
Expected Running time: 4 hours, 30 minutes 

Director Nicholas Hytner makes his Met debut with this new production of Verdi’s profound, beautiful, and most ambitious opera. Roberto Alagna leads the cast, and Ferruccio Furlanetto, Marina Poplavskaya, Anna Smirnova, and Simon Keenlyside also star. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, back after his triumphant debut leading Carmen, conducts. “I think Don Carlo is the quintessential Verdi opera,” Hytner says. “Right through this opera there is, on the one hand, an implacable expression of impending doom and, on the other hand, a succession of the most gloriously open-throated arias, the most fantastically determined music.”  

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Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West
LIVE: Saturday, January 8, 2011 1 PM ET / 12 PM CT
ENCORE: Wednesday January 26, 6:30 PM (local time) 
Expected Running time: 3 hours, 30 minutes 

Puccini’s wild-west opera had its world premiere in 1910 at the Met. Now, on the occasion of its centennial, all-American diva Deborah Voigt sings the title role of the “girl of the golden west,” starring opposite Marcello Giordani. Nicola Luisotti conducts.

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Adams’s Nixon in China - New Production
LIVE: Saturday, February 12, 2011 1 PM ET / 12 PM CT
ENCORE: Wednesday March 2, 6:30 PM (local time) 
Expected Running time: 4 hours

“All of my operas have dealt on deep psychological levels with our American mythology,” says composer John Adams, who conducts the Met premiere of his most famous opera. “The meeting of Nixon and Mao is a mythological moment in world history, particularly American history.” Acclaimed director and longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars makes his Met debut with this groundbreaking 1987 work, an exploration of the human truths beyond the headlines surrounding President Nixon’s 1972 encounter with Communist China. Baritone James Maddalena stars in the title role.

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Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride
LIVE: Saturday, February 26, 2011 1 PM ET / 12 PM CT
ENCORE: Wednesday March 16, 6:30 PM (local time) 
Expected Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes 

Susan Graham and Plácido Domingo reprise their starring roles in Gluck’s nuanced and elegant interpretation of this primal Greek myth. Tenor Paul Groves also returns to Stephen Wadsworth’s insightful production, first seen in 2007. Patrick Summers conducts.

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Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor
LIVE: Saturday, March 19 26, 2011 1 PM ET / 12 PM CT
ENCORE: Wednesday April 6, 6:30 PM (local time) 
Expected Running time: 4 hours 

Natalie Dessay triumphed as the fragile heroine of Donizetti’s masterpiece on Opening Night of the 2007–08 season in Mary Zimmerman’s hit production. Now she returns to the role of the innocent young woman driven to madness, opposite Joseph Calleja, who sings her lover Edgardo.

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Rossini’s Le Comte Ory – New Production
LIVE: Saturday, April 9, 2011 1 PM ET / 12 PM CT
ENCORE: Wednesday April 27, 6:30 PM (local time) 
Expected Running time: 3 hours 

Rossini’s vocally dazzling comedy stars bel canto sensation Juan Diego Flórez in the title role of this Met premiere production. He vies with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, in the trouser role of Isolier, for the love of the lonely Countess Adèle, sung by soprano Diana Damrau. Bartlett Sher, director of the Met’s hit productions of The Barber of Seville and The Tales of Hoffmann, describes the world of the opera as, “a place where love is dangerous. People get hurt. That can be very funny and very painful. Rossini captures both—with the most beautiful love music Rossini ever wrote.” 

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Strauss’s Capriccio
LIVE: Saturday, April 23, 2011 1 PM ET / 12 PM CT
ENCORE: Wednesday May 11, 6:30 PM (local time) 
Expected Running time: 3 hours 

On Opening Night of the 2008–09 season, Renée Fleming dazzled audiences when she sang the final scene of Strauss’s wise and worldly meditation on art and life. Now she performs the entire work, in which the composer explores the essence of opera itself. Joseph Kaiser and Sarah Connolly also star, and Andrew Davis conducts.

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Verdi’s Il Trovatore
LIVE: Saturday, April 30, 2011 1 PM ET / 12 PM CT
ENCORE: Wednesday May 18, 6:30 PM (local time) 
Expected Running time: 3 hours 

David McVicar’s stirring production of Verdi’s intense drama premiered in the 2008–09 season. James Levine leads this revival, starring four extraordinary singers—Sondra Radvanovsky, Dolora Zajick, Marcelo Álvarez, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky—in what might be the composer’s most melodically rich score.

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Wagner’s Die Walküre
LIVE: Saturday, May 14, 2011 12 PM ET / 11 AM CT
ENCORE: Wednesday June 1, 6:30 PM (local time) 
Expected Running time: 5 hours, 15 minutes 

A stellar cast comes together for this second installment of Robert Lepage’s new production of the Ring cycle, conducted by James Levine. Bryn Terfel is Wotan, lord of the Gods. Deborah Voigt adds the part of Brünnhilde to her extensive Wagnerian repertoire at the Met. Jonas Kaufmann and Eva-Maria Westbroek star as the twins, Siegmund and Sieglinde, and Stephanie Blythe is Fricka.

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